Film Review - The Great Wall (2017)

The Great Wall marks the first genuine co-production between the United States and China and the story here concerns Matt Damon as a thief on the run until he comes across the great wall of China and the vast army that helps guard it from invaders (the Wall was built to keep the Mongols out though they weren't made to pay for it so that's a plus) but the attackers against the Wall are not human but are a lizard race called the Tao Tse and they will be hard to defeat.

I cannot lie I was very very disappointed in this movie and my hopes going in were not all that high but films can have bad previews but then turn out to be pretty good Miss Peregrine and Doctor Strange are just two examples from last year that I will name but unfortunately this turned out to be the latter where the previews weren't the best but the film itself feels even worse.

And the main reason for that is simply the storytelling it is very very thin and rather weak and this movie in many ways reminds me of how I felt about Warcraft from last year in that this is a very handsome production (to look at the film purely from a visual standpoint is gorgeous) but without an interesting story that pretty much rips off films like Aliens and Starship Troopers and even Independence Day Resurgence (I'm not joking though smh) I just sat there feeling bored and sleepy and there were a number of times where I did want to fall asleep.

And even the battle sequences were not that impressive there's a lot of CGI that looks okay but not great and Matt Damon wasn't that good either and I really like him as an actor but here just put on the MATT DAMON!! mode and snarled his way throughout most of the film as if he was bored with the material he was given at times.

And ironically enough this reminded me of the reception of the first major movie ever to shoot in China got and that film was Tai-Pan in 1986 which starred Bryan Brown and the review by Roger Ebert of that film is very fun and worth watching.

And so that was the Great Wall it is not a good film and frankly go see Split instead as that is good fun whereas this is boring, 1 out of 5.